`Sarcred And Profane`

An Emperor`s View Of Rome

March 20, 1988|By Uli Schmetzer, Rome correspondent.

ROME — The huge bronze statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius lay prostrate in the Roman workshop of the Central Institute for Restoration in Viale San Michele, a sad reminder of a rotting city and its venerable monuments.

For 18 centuries Marcus had sat astride his horse above Rome, gazing across the tiled roofs with the justified aloofness of the only eyewitness to have seen the Eternal City turn into a provincial slum after the fall of the Roman Empire, then watched it regain new splendor as headquarters of the spiritual empire of the Popes.

Various generations transferred him from one Roman hill to another until Michelangelo, enamored by the majesty of the Old Man, made him the centerpiece of Capitoline Hill in 1536, raising him and his horse on a pedestal, then stepping back to command them:

``Walk.``

The statue did not. But since then Marcus has gazed across Rome from Capitoline Hill, a tranquil island above the din of coughing motors whose fumes finally forced him to submit to ``surgery`` by 20th Century

technicians-``nurses``-who are trying to restore the Old Man and his Horse to their golden glory.

At first the diagnosis was bad.

``He has suffered more damage over the last 20 years than in 18 centuries,`` admitted the chief nurse. Still, the ``cure`` promises to be successful.

Man and horse are gradually recovering from a nasty bout of corrosive cancer, the kind caused by exposure to modern air. Both contracted the disease over the last two decades when the clean atmosphere they had inhaled for so many years became infested with the carbon monoxide of exhaust fumes trapped in the narrow cobblestoned alleys of a city built for horses and carriages and not the onslaught of combustion-propelled traffic.

``It is best to see Roma from a distance these days,`` Marcus advised from his hospital bed where he has lived for the last four years inside a corset suspended by slings.

``Go to the Gianicolo (the high ridge above Trastevere across the Tiber River) at sunset. It`s the only spot where you can still see her, dressed in the effeminate renaissance and baroque drapings in which the popes wrapped her. By Jove, she is today a far cry from the manly grandeur of the great era of consuls and emperors.``

Then Marcus winced. It sounded like grating metal. The nurses were probing for sediment again.

He was right, as usual. It is best to view Rome from afar before exploiting her charms and trying to unravel the many petticoats that encase her like the skins of an old onion.

From the spot on the Gianicolo above the ancient cannon that is fired at noon, she sprawls below in the orange light of a fading day, a mellow tone that agrees with her because it hides the wrinkles and the scars left by age and the abuses practiced upon her.

At sunset, when the cupolas of many of her 364 churches glitter with false gold, when the ochre walls shimmer like velvet and the flat-shaved pina trees cast long shadows, she is at her best. It is also the hour when she enchants those foreigners who come to pay court.

Some ran off in time, to escape her energy-sapping lethargy, the afternoon siestas behind shuttered windows, the convivial dinners in tucked-away trattorias where evenings are still whiled away in animated gossip, her most popular entertainment.

Others she held forever. They rest below her in the Protestant cemetery in the shadow of the Pyramid of Caius Cestius at the beginning of the Ostiense Road. It is that corner of her that will forever remain foreign, a tract of earth of which the poet Shelley wrote:

``It might make one in love with death to think one should be buried in so sweet a place.``

Goethe buried his only son there, and Keats wrote this embittered epitaph for his own tombstone:

``Here lies one whose name is writ in water.``

Next time we met, Marcus was irritable. They had amputated one leg, but promised to graft it back on.

``The Romans of today are ignorant about their monuments. Don`t ever ask them for explanations or directions,`` he warned.

He was sprawled on his back while three men in white coats put new rivets in his ribs and a throng of visitors gawked in ecstasy at his gaping chest.

``What have they done with their heritage? First they cannibalized the imperial palaces and monuments to build their own homes. What was left they used as shelters, as toilets or props for market stands. They melted down bronze statues and bronze doors, scraped off gold, broke off friezes, jimmied away cornerstones and finally left the sad relics to be pockmarked by pollution.

``And now, suddenly, worried that nothing will be left to attract the tourists, they have packed everything that`s left in scaffolding and plastic sheets for what they call restoration. By Jove, Trajan`s Column, my own column, half the Forum and now even the Trevi Fountain are swathed in bandages, just like me.``